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reteika23's review
dark
emotional
hopeful
sad
fast-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Murder
now_booking's review
challenging
emotional
hopeful
sad
medium-paced
3.75
Another banger by this author. This is my 3rd read in a row by this new-to-me author and I can say she knows how to write deeply emotional, incredibly dramatic romance with love, tears and a high dose of messiness. In this story, Martese is living her HEA with a career military spouse when her existence is overturned upon his death. Rather than being deployed to Afghanistan as she had thought, he’s actually been just miles away with a secret family. Clearly devastated by this betrayal and struggling to process it, Martese’s social work job has her delivering a newly-orphaned child to party boy lawyer, Preston, who was named in the child’s mothers will as the legal guardian. Sparks fly when the two meet and they must help each other heal from past brokenness.
This book was heartbreakingly raw. You could feel the realness in Martese’s emotions as she processed the loss of her husband in such tragic and dishonorable circumstances. She experiences on-page mental breakdowns and so be mindful of that if that may be triggering. I think all the aspects of the book dealing with the main premise were beautifully-handled. But whereas Martese was a complex character dealing with a lot that challenged even her own perceptions of who she was, I feel like less was done with Preston, and there was scope to also have his character as developed. Like why was he an f-boy prior to Martese, what made him so relationship-phobic, what then prompted the sudden shift. I think he started of damaged and interesting but then his character development sort of petered out. Poor Amaya who arrives in the story under tragic circumstances is fantastic, but the severity of the circumstances in which she arrived are glossed over- she’s expected to be okay and I suppose she is but it felt weird that they weren’t more focused on her mental health when she as a child was going through trauma arguably at least as severe as Martese’s. It didn’t seem on-brand for Martese and Preston to have overlooked this and for it not to be interrogated on page being how mental health-positive this book was overall. Also, I found the transition of Martese and Preston’s relationship to an intimate one very abrupt and somewhat unrealistic. It didn’t really make sense to me. Furthermore, the resolution at the end and the explanation of Rick’s betrayal just didn’t really add up for me- I found it to be one twist too many for my taste.
Nonetheless, overall, I adored this. This author writes raw, emotional romances that you can’t put down whether or not you like the characters and whether or not you think they’re messy. The characters are real and problematic and eminently human and eminently deserving of love and that’s unique in romance where sometimes it can appear that only perfectly nice characters deserve to be loved. I’m already prepped to read my 4th in a row from her!
This book was heartbreakingly raw. You could feel the realness in Martese’s emotions as she processed the loss of her husband in such tragic and dishonorable circumstances. She experiences on-page mental breakdowns and so be mindful of that if that may be triggering. I think all the aspects of the book dealing with the main premise were beautifully-handled. But whereas Martese was a complex character dealing with a lot that challenged even her own perceptions of who she was, I feel like less was done with Preston, and there was scope to also have his character as developed. Like why was he an f-boy prior to Martese, what made him so relationship-phobic, what then prompted the sudden shift. I think he started of damaged and interesting but then his character development sort of petered out. Poor Amaya who arrives in the story under tragic circumstances is fantastic, but the severity of the circumstances in which she arrived are glossed over- she’s expected to be okay and I suppose she is but it felt weird that they weren’t more focused on her mental health when she as a child was going through trauma arguably at least as severe as Martese’s. It didn’t seem on-brand for Martese and Preston to have overlooked this and for it not to be interrogated on page being how mental health-positive this book was overall. Also, I found the transition of Martese and Preston’s relationship to an intimate one very abrupt and somewhat unrealistic. It didn’t really make sense to me. Furthermore, the resolution at the end and the explanation of Rick’s betrayal just didn’t really add up for me- I found it to be one twist too many for my taste.
Nonetheless, overall, I adored this. This author writes raw, emotional romances that you can’t put down whether or not you like the characters and whether or not you think they’re messy. The characters are real and problematic and eminently human and eminently deserving of love and that’s unique in romance where sometimes it can appear that only perfectly nice characters deserve to be loved. I’m already prepped to read my 4th in a row from her!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gun violence, Infidelity, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Grief, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, and Murder
Moderate: Violence, Vomit, Stalking, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, and Sexual harassment
Minor: Body shaming, Fatphobia, and Police brutality